Replanting at Topi Estate and Akapojana Estate 2022 In 2022 we continued our replanting programme for palms over the age of 25 years. It is important to maintain a consistent  replanting schedule of 4% to 5% per year so we can continue to advance our planting material with high performance palms,  and  maintain an even age profile and maximise yield performance. Univanich also continues with planting of progeny trials to ensure continuous improvement of the Univanich breeding programme.

Nursery Expansion at Topi Nursery With the increasing demand for seedlings in the region, the Topi Nursery has been expanded to cater for an additional 100,000 seedlings per year, making a total capacity of 400,000 seedlings per year. In 2022 we sold over 1.6 million seedlings to oil palm farmers. Sales for the high performing Univanich clonal seedlings is strengthening year on year.

CVP factory – Capacity Improvement Project The existing machineries at CVP factory have been improved and modified to increase the milling capacity from 60 TFFB/hr to 70 TFFB/hr in the peak crop period. Modifications were made to control the flow of FFB following the sterilization process, which allows for a faster turnaround time for loading the sterilizer. A faster turnaround provides for an increased number of cycles per day. This additional capacity allows Univanich to maximize throughput during peak cropping periods.

Expansion of Daily Production tanks at Siam and Pabon Factory The volume of the daily production tanks at both Siam factory and Pabon factory have been increased to accommodate the additional oil produced by our earlier factory capacity improvement projects. Two 250 mt tanks capacity at Siam factory were enlarged to 300 mt, and two 150 mt tanks at Pabon factory were enlarged to 240 mt respectively.

Expansion of Fat Traps at Siam and TOPI factories To accommodate the increased milling capacity at Siam factory and TOPI factory, we have increased the size of the fat trap to allow for longer retention time to allow oil to separate. This allows for more residual oil to be skimmed off and returned to the process before the POME is discharged to the biogas digester and treatment ponds. The main benefit of this expansion is to further reduce our oil losses in the milling process.

Lamthap factory – Boiler Modification The existing 30 T-steam/hr water tube boiler at Lamthap factory has been modified and upgraded from saturated steam output to superheated steam output. The superheated steam has greater internal energy that can be used to power a new high efficiency steam turbine, to be installed in 2023. This modification allows us to reduce the fuel intake and produce significantly more power to run our own operation, in particular our kernel crushing plant. Currently we use our own biogas produced power and also the local grid to run our kernel crushing operation. We will be able to reduce significant power costs and supply the local grid with more of our biogas produced power.